Nice Cartoon

[Plummet]

**LINK**

Plummet

[Peter Christy]

And very true!

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Pete

[Chris Walby]

Confused..what's the one thing you should not do with an autogiro that you would do with a stalling fixed wing aircraft?

If I was in a stalling aircraft I would power up and nose down... so why does that not work with an autogyro?

[stu knowles]

I read that negative G is instant disaster for an autogyro. I know from model sizes that up elevator tends to increase the speed of the rotor so maybe forward stick tends to slow the rotor, killing of what bit of lift that you have along with any unfortunate human on board

Only a guess though

Someone will be along who knows I'm sure

[Peter Christy]

DON'T PUSH THE STICK FORWARD! It will lead to immediate mast bumping, and either the rotor-head will fly off, or it will boom-strike. That's what happened at the (in)famous Farnborough crash.

The pilot let it over-speed - not in itself dangerous, as an auto-gyro will try and pitch up in such a situation, thus reducing the speed automatically. However, when it pitched up, the pilot shoved forward and it boom-struck. It was a mistake he never repeated, alas!

Apparently the pilot was very experienced on fixed wing, but had little time on autogyros, and must have acted instinctively.

**LINK**

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Pete

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Mark Stevens 1]

Chris - As both Stuart and Pete have correctly pointed out, don't push the stick forward on an Autogyro. The mast bumping bit / losing the whole rotorhead speaks for itself.

On other machines with a slightly more rigid head, you will find putting the nose down into a dive actually stops the rotors spinning mean you go into a rapid dive until you pull out to get the rotors spinning up again.

It has been done as a party trick with some model autogyros, I'm sure you can do it quite well on some of the DB designs. I would not try it on the designs that use direct control to the head though.

Mark